Chocolate Sheet Cake with Delicious Vanilla Frosting

I have been intrigued for a while now by a recipe that has been touted on numerous blogs as, “the best vanilla frosting I’ve ever had!” The recipe looked a little odd because it contained flour that has to be cooked. I’ve never heard of flour in a frosting recipe, but yesterday I decided to give it a try. I wasn’t disappointed. My husband actually said that this is the best vanilla frosting that I have ever made, and I have made a lot of it because I LOVE frosting. I thought the frosting was interesting at first – it reminded me a bit of whipped cream, but I have to admit that it then grew on me. The boys really liked it, one of them liked it even more the second day.

I found the frosting recipe, along with the chocolate sheet cake recipe over at Ree Drummond’s blog called The Pioneer Woman Cooks. She advertised the chocolate cake as the best chocolate sheet cake ever. How could I not try it? I do love a chocolate sheet cake like this because frosting is my favorite part of a cake/cupcake and in my mind this cake to frosting ratio is perfect. I’ll make both of these recipes again.

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (To speed this up, you can place the saucepan into some ice water so the mixture cools. Don’t let the water get into the frosting!) It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, at least 5 minutes. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream. You can now frost your cake.

I made this frosting a while back. My mother-in-law requested it and who am I to say no to a request from her, right? I, too, thought it was interesting. Not in a bad way though. We all decided it tasted kinda like melted ice cream. Just last week this frosting popped back onto my radar because I’m thinking about making a root beer float cake and I thought it would be perfect on that.